Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Semi-Original Content

Crossposted from my aforementioned Deviant Art journal, in which I like to complain about misogyny in commercials.

Okay, so those Twix commercials. Those "Need a moment" ones. I liked them until something occurred to me: Every one of them, without fail (unless I'm forgetting any, in which case tell me and I'll eat my humble pie), has been about men somehow deceiving women so that the women will like them better.

-First one: Wife in hot pink spandex asks if the ridiculous pants makes her butt look big. Husband shoves candy into mouth and mumbles, so wife cannot hear that he totally wants to call her fat. Wife is happy!
-Second one, maybe?: Beavis and Butthead are all grown up and in a bookstore, chuckling over some skeezy book about how to pick up women. Girl one of them knows walks over and says hello. Man eats candy in a freeze frame, and is inspired to pretend to be offended by the book. Girl likes guy!
-Most recent one I've seen: Girl and guy are talking at a party. Girl is discussing politics intelligently. Guy does not listen to a word she says, and goes, "Uhhhhhh, wanna come back to my place?" Girl is rightfully outraged that guy is such an a-hole. Guy eats candy in freeze frame and comes up with some BS story about wanting to blog with her. Girl loves blogging and presumably would LOVE to come back to guy's place!

Puke.


Also, I HATE Girls Gone Wild. Everything about the whole thing. The exploiting possibly-underage, probably-drunk girls, the complaining by many that now that the girls are starting to enjoy it it's "not as good" anymore, the fact that Joe Francis is a skeezy rapist if about a zillion separate accounts are to be believed, the sell-your-dignity-for-a-t-shirt mentality, all of it.

Which is why it hurts me so much that the steel drum music in the background of their disgusting commercials is so catchy that I frequently find myself dancing to it and humming along with it when I'm doing the dishes and watching the Daily Show. *die*

2 comments:

TheQuietOne said...

I completely agree with you about the Girls Gone Wild. That is wrong and disgusting that on National T.V. we exploit young drunk women.:[

However, I our opinions differ on the Snickers commercials. When they designed those commercials I doubt that the purpose was to offend women. I believe they chose those situations because they occur in real life. Sometimes you just need to sit back and let it slide. Society is not out to get women and i'm sure the Snickers commercials weren't either.

L. E. Hairstylist said...

See, I don't think it was intentional either. I mean, who the eff would purposely distance half their customer base? But I think that the fact that it wasn't on purpose kind of makes it just as bad. I mean, if your whole campaign revolves around lying to women to get them to sleep with you, it's kind of messed up that you don't notice it.

I would be totally okay with it if they did a few more commercials involving women lying to get men to sleep with them. Someone showed me a much less played commercial from the same campaign involving a boyfriend and girlfriend team of little white liars to defuse an awkward situation, and I like it very much.

I was just annoyed, mostly, because it's candy. It's a unisex product. I'd prefer the message of "it will get people to have sex with you" to "it will get women to have sex with you, if you are a man."